Related Content

Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal says he wants to buy a £2B stake in Anglo American, a major vote of confidence in the diversified global miner's recovery, Reuters reports.Agarwal, who has majority control of Hindustan Zinc through global diversified metals/mining company Vedanta, which he founded in 1979, will make the investment via his family trust Volcan Holdings, Volcan said in a statement, adding that neither Volcan nor Vedanta intended to make an offer for Anglo American.

Anglo American unit De Beers has achieved commercial production on budget and ahead of schedule at Gahcho Kué, the world’s largest new diamond mine in the last 13 years. Gahcho Kué is a JV between De Beers (51%) and Mountain Province Diamonds (49%).The mine 280km NE of Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories, is expected to produce 54Mct of rough diamonds from three openpits over a 13-year life.

Major shareholders John Robinson and Nick Paspaley have again come to aid Australian Pacific Coal, agreeing conditionally to advance $A15M that will help it complete the acquisition of the Dartbrook underground coal mine in NSW's Hunter Valley from Anglo American and Marubeni Coal.AQC says the convertible loan will help demonstrate its ability to replace $9.245M environmental bonds, one of the conditions of the deal. Through cornerstone investor Trepang Services, Robinson and Paspaley have already agreed a $20M convertible loan and $5M secured loan for the Dartbrook acquisition.

New US President Donald Trump's determination to reverse course on environmental regulation could be the spark to revive one of the world's largest undeveloped copper and gold resources, the Pebble project in a sensitive area of Alaska.

Anglo American chief executive Mark Cutifani has credited the international diversified miner's success in meeting wide-ranging operational, cost, capital and portfolio targets for its ability to reduce net debt by 34% in the year to Dec 2016.The company ended the year with net debt of $8.5B, well ahead of its FY2016 target of $10B, after lifting attributable free cash-flow to $US2.6B - from a $1B negative outcome 12 months earlier. Underlying EBITDA rose 25% to $6.08B, generating attributable net profit of $1.6B from its $5.6B loss in FY2015.

Anglo American will temporarily suspend operations at its El Soldado copper mine in Chile after failing to receive approval from Chilean mining regulator Sernageomin for a redesign that would have helped keep output flowing, Reuters reports.Options include appealing or coming up with a new plan for the mine, which produced 36,000t of copper in 2015.

Australian coal miner Realm has completed the first full quarter of production under its new management team at the Foxleigh mine in Queensland's Bowen Basin, posting saleable low volatile PCI coal output of 865,000t in the 3 months to end-Dec (Q4). The mine's CY2016 production was about 3.1Mt.Realm completed the acquisition of 70% of Foxleigh from Anglo American for $A43.7M plus up to $75M royalties. The company ended the period with $70M cash on hand.

New owner Realm has posted marketable PCI quality coal reserves of 39.2Mt - 22.4Mt proved and 16.8Mt probable - at the Foxleigh coal mine in the Bowen Basin of Qld, Australia.Realm says the opencut mine has made a smooth transition since it acquired the 70% interest from Anglo American in August. Realm's subsidiary Middlemount South manages the Foxleigh JV with POSCO Australia (20%) and Nippon Steel-Mitsubishi Metal (10%).

An environmental group has filed a lawsuit against De Beers Canada, accusing the diamond producer of failing to report toxic levels of mercury and methylmercury at its Victor diamond mine in N Ontario, Canada, Reuters reports.The Wildlands League alleges De Beers, 85% owned by Anglo American, failed to report mercury levels from 5 of 9 surface water monitoring stations for the creeks next to its open pit mine between 2009 and 2016.